


I remember when you were here

by Becassine



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Angsty Schmoop, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Christmas Fluff, Christmas Presents, Domestic Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Mistletoe, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28266495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Becassine/pseuds/Becassine
Summary: Steve thinks about four Christmases that really mattered.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 29
Kudos: 82





	I remember when you were here

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this! I wasn't going to write anything for Christmas and then [the wonderful Hannah-stagram](https://hannah-stagram.tumblr.com/) sent me a couple of Christmas prompts and I decided to write them. I then didn't write for a week because I was terrified I had covid - spoiler alert: I don't - and churned this out yesterday and today. I hope it's what you hoped for Hannah!
> 
> A huge thanks to [Cindy (hanitrash)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HaniTrash/pseuds/HaniTrash) for the great crit on this. I hope this brings everyone a bit of happiness this year. And there is a _bit_ of angst but I promise it has a properly happy ending.

_1940_

It’s cold in New York City. 

Ferociously so. 

It seeps into the tenement buildings through cracked windows and ill-fitting doors, the temperatures frosty enough that you can see your breath in the morning if the fire’s allowed to get low. The air is full of smoke and smog; people are keeping the fireplaces burning morning and night with coal, wood - and whatever else that burns. 

Steve’s been coughing for the past couple of weeks, his asthma fiercely reminding him that he hates this weather. He hasn’t caught pneumonia yet though so that’s something.

He’s bundled in bed drawing today, feet resting on top of a rag-covered hot brick to try and help his circulation. Bucky left early this morning, picking up extra shifts so that they could get something better than their usual dinner for Christmas. They both know that he also picks up the extra shifts so that if Steve gets sick, they can afford the medication he’ll dearly need. They don’t talk about it.

Steve hates it. He doesn’t have a choice, not when the weather is like this. He was fired from his last shop job just over a month ago and his health concerns are known enough around the neighbourhood that nobody is going to take a chance on him in the winter.

But he hates being reliant on Bucky. So when this commission - _paid!_ \- came through for illustrative work - a word of mouth kinda thing because Steve is _not_ in demand - he jumped on it. No questions asked. 

It’s how he’s going to buy Bucky a Christmas present. 

Neither of them have expectations on any sort of lavish presents, not the type you see in the store windows in the city. Sometimes they go and look, tease each other about how ridiculous they’d look wearing this or that. But Steve’s artist eyes didn’t miss the way that Bucky glanced twice at a scarf in the window. And Steve’s intimate enough with the state of Bucky’s wardrobe that he knows he needs new gloves. 

It’s not the set from the shop window but it’s close enough.

And when, weeks later, he gives it to Bucky - having hidden it in a loose floorboard under the bed - the smile on his face is blinding. Bucky’s smile is a thing of glory to Steve and always has been. It makes him hold his breath. The way that Bucky’s eyes soften, the curve of his lip. Even the slight imperfection in his teeth is all the more reason to love him so far as Steve is concerned. 

“Stevie! How did you- You didn’t need to…”

“Don’t even think about telling me that, Buck,” Steve says, deftly looping the scarf around Bucky’s neck. “You got me those paints I’ve been looking at in the art shop for months now.”

The scarf and gloves are navy blue. Bucky’s always looked beautiful in blue. Real smart.

“How did you pay for this?” Bucky’s fingers, too delicate for the work that he does at the navy yard, move up to stroke the fabric. It’s not the finest of wool - Steve’s commissions will never stretch to that - but Mrs. Greene has a way with the knitting needles and they’ve come out as beautiful as he could hope for.

“Art job,” he says, shrugs nonchalantly even though he’s secretly pleased as hell. “Wanted to surprise you with it.”

“Steve…” Bucky looks soft, _loved_.

Steve can’t help what he does next. Not when Bucky’s looking at him like that. He wraps his fingers around the ends of the scarf and draws him in closer. Their lips meet and the talking is done, their thanks and appreciation for each other shown through kisses instead.

It’s a good Christmas.

_2017_

It feels strange to spend Christmas somewhere warm.

There’s a holiday feel to it, a sense that this isn’t permanent but fleeting and something to be enjoyed. Steve and Bucky are in the city at T’Challa’s invitation, staying in a suite of rooms inside the palace. Steve’s spent a few Christmases with the Avengers since his de-thawing but he doesn’t think Bucky has celebrated it since the forties. 

He’s asked Bucky about his time on the lam and how he spent Christmas, had gotten a sardonic and then amused glance for his troubles. It makes Steve’s heart hurt.

Christmas is so different to what he remembers. Trees are so readily available and everybody seems to have one, rich or poor. Some are even fake, designed to look like perfect trees with no flaws. They’re decorated in fantastical baubles, ranging from the bright metallic to homemade and crafty. The Avengers tree has Lucky’s paw print set into plaster and painted a sparkly purple. Steve loves the ones that Pepper brought back from Germany on one of her many trips, hand-painted and achingly beautiful.

And presents.

Steve’s not sure he’ll ever get over his innate horror at how much money is spent on presents. 

Today though, he has a mission. A mission to make Christmas something that Bucky can find joy in. T’Challa’s holding a banquet - which isn’t _exactly_ what Steve had in mind to try and jog Bucky’s memory - and then there’s some other activities and-

Bucky calls his name and he stops fussing with his hair, walks through the myriad of rooms into the living room. He stops on the threshold of his bedroom and the living room when an invisible force field surrounds him. Panic surges through him and he glances about to see what’s happening. His instinct is to shove at it, shove _through_ it, and he’s about to do so when he catches sight of Bucky out of the corner of his eye.

“Buck-”

“Got yourself in quite a predicament there, hey?”

Steve doesn’t know what Bucky’s referring to until Bucky flicks his eyes up and Steve follows. There, hooked innocuously above his head, is a sprig of creamy white berries, surrounded by a red bow. 

Steve has a sudden flashback to 1934, Bucky carrying a sprig of mistletoe everywhere and demanding kisses from the girls in the neighbourhood. Steve had been consumed by jealousy, the feeling mutated into sullenness and anger. Bucky draped over him and telling him not to be so sour about it, to get some mistletoe of his own and get in the spirit of things. Steve had shrugged Bucky’s arm off of his shoulders and scowled, said that he needed to get home and help his ma with dinner.

And then that night.

That night had been the night that Bucky had shimmied up the fire escape, had tapped at Steve’s window softly. Steve’s ma was asleep, blonde hair like golden silk across the pillowcase. Steve had eased open the window quietly and stepped onto the rickety landing. He’d wondered what Bucky wanted, what wouldn’t wait until the morning when it was less baltic. Less likely to freeze them to death.

That was the night that Bucky had kissed him under the mistletoe, hurried and afraid. That was the night that everything had changed for the two of them. 

Steve clues in to what the mistletoe means, to what it represents and he smiles. “Oh.”

“Oh, he says,” Bucky replies, stalking across the room towards Steve in a way that is pure Winter Soldier. He’s got an elegance and grace about him and reminds Steve of nothing so much as a jaguar. Basks like one too in the sunshine when he thinks nobody is watching him.

“You want this, Buck?” Steve asks, not pressing against the invisible barrier any longer. His blood feels hot in his body and he knows he’s blushing, can feel the burn of it. He doesn’t want to waste any more time, wants to touch Bucky and hold him and wind his fingers in that hair of his. “I wasn’t sure.”

Bucky regards him with a grin. It’s not the carefree grin of his youth but Steve sees a shadow of the boy he once knew in it, cocksure and brilliant and heartbreakingly beautiful. “I wasn’t ready.”

Steve inhales sharply as Bucky moves through the barrier, even though he knows now that whatever Bucky’s planned isn’t going to hurt them. And he _has_ planned it. Steve can tell by the happiness radiating off him, making those slate blue eyes of his sparkle with the joy of a successful mission. “But now you are?” he asks, needing to hear the answer.

Bucky nods and loops an arm around Steve’s neck, thumb pressing against the base of his skull. “Now I am, Stevie.”

It’s the best Christmas since he woke up.

_2022_

Steve doesn’t celebrate Christmas anymore. The first year they were all too numb to consider it. Somebody put up a tree at the Avenger’s compound - somebody on Tony’s staff, Steve assumes - but there was an underlying bitterness to it. No presents underneath it addressed to people who are no longer here, no spending the afternoon misusing their powers to decorate it in weird and wonderful ways. Just a pervasive silence and a glittering tree.

Steve couldn’t look at the tree. It reminded him of everything he’d lost.

There wasn’t a tree the second year.

Or the third.

And now it’s the fourth year. The fourth year since they lost the others. The fourth year since he heard Bucky say, “Steve?” and watched him crumble away. 

Bucky always falls. 

Steve can never seem to catch him in time.

Since the snap, the world has been slowly falling apart. 

Steve wonders when he’ll fall apart too.

It’s the worst Christmas of all.

_2023_

Steve can barely hear himself think.

Morgan is running around showing everybody her new toys, Tony’s got some obnoxiously commercial Christmas song blaring through the great room, and Thor is trying to sing along - unsuccessfully but loudly - to it. 

Steve tunes it out. His eyes are on Bucky who is unwrapping his present. Steve’s noticed nowadays that people rip wrapping paper… He supposes it comes from never having to worry about buying more of it. He remembers the thirties where they’d save and reuse brown paper over and over until it was too soft to fold without tearing. Wrapping paper was still a new-ish thing when they were boys and was far too expensive to be bought by them.

The way that Bucky is opening it with precision - careful _not_ to rip - whilst looking at Steve with a blatant look of suspicion, warms his heart a little.

He’s already rolled his eyes four times. Steve had decided to do a box in a box in a box knowing that it would frustrate the hell out of him although he hopes that the payoff will be worth it. So far Bucky’s amassing quite the armoury - which he’s keeping well out of Morgan’s view. Two knives - one Gerber, one Benchmade - and a gun - a Glock naturally because he’s seen how Bucky eyes weapons up like shiny things to be collected - plus some nasty little disablers not dissimilar to those that Nat uses. 

The boxes are getting smaller. 

He opens another and frowns, then looks up at Steve. 

“Gloves and a scarf?” 

Steve nods, hopes fervently that Bucky will remember. His memory isn’t a perfect thing, too much damage done that even the serum can’t fix after such repeated injury. Sometimes he remembers things from their past with perfect clarity. Sometimes it’s with a frown and a dull headache. Sometimes it’s not at all.

Steve tries to keep smiling no matter which it is.

“You… You got me these once, didn’t you?” he asks and Steve thinks he feels his heart flip.

“Yeah, Buck. Nothing so nice as these, couldn’t afford it back then, but you nearly got frostbite that year. Do you remember?” 

Bucky puts the glove on his metal hand first and flexes it. “Sorta. I remember they were blue like this. I… Left the scarf at the dancehall?”

“You did... How about you open your last present, pal?” he asks and Bucky harrumphs and takes the glove off so he can unwrap the last one. He’s no less meticulous in how he unwraps the fiddly small thing, that metal hand of his as dexterous and graceful as his one wrought from flesh and bone.

“Don’t see why you’re making such a fuss of me,” he mutters, looking up through his eyelashes at Steve. It’s his disgruntled but fond look and Steve loves to see it. It means that Bucky is pleased. After everything they’ve been through, Steve wants to see Bucky forever pleased.

The last box is small. 

The last box contains a ring.

The last box makes Bucky gasp sharply and look up. 

He looks both shocked and - Steve can tell from the clench of his jaw, the way that his eyes flash dark - angry. “Steve?”

Steve debates asking him what’s wrong but decides not to, gestures to the ring instead. It’s a risky move, in the great room instead of their bedroom or somewhere a little more private, but it felt important to do it out here in the open where people can see. He doesn’t want to hide what they are to anybody. He wants everybody to know what Bucky means to him.

“What about it, sweetheart?” he asks, trying to keep his voice steady. “Will you marry me?”

Bucky’s face goes through a complicated range of expressions. From murderous to delighted. “You… You asshole.”

Steve’s noticed that whilst the music is still blaring, people are looking at them. Even Thor has stopped singing and is whispering something to Sam. He knows that Bucky is cognisant of this too.

“Why-” He stops, shakes his head and hopes this isn’t about to backfire. “Is that a yes?”

“Of course it’s a fucking yes, Rogers,” Bucky snarls as he shoves the ring on his right hand and surges forward, hands framing Steve’s jaw as he presses a hard kiss to his lips. Steve can feel the cold metal of the band, and looks forward to feeling it every single day. 

Bucky pulls back far too soon and Steve chases, grunting in annoyance when Bucky stays just out of reach. “But I was going to propose to you this evening.”

Steve laughs, guffaws, but the sound is soon smothered by Bucky’s lips on his again.

It’s the best Christmas so far.

**Author's Note:**

> So what did you think? Come tell me! 
> 
> Kudos and comments are always, always loved. They're basically as essential as my Christmas lunch & booze.
> 
> Come talk to (or yell at) me on [my tumblr](https://becassine.tumblr.com/)!


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